The “A Tale of X Gamers” initiative intends to illustrate that it is possible to build an army for 40K, Fantasy or any other wargame spending a small amount of money over a one year period.

In the project I want to illustrate all the process from the choice of an army and its list of miniatures, all the basic material one must have to start in the hobby until the end when we’ll play a 2000 point game with it.

I hope you enjoy this series.

Project Imperial Fists.

4th month.

So this month is cleaning time!

I have purchased 23 Space Marine miniatures on Ebay with a horrible paintjob which ate up all the details, but that hasn’t turned the miniatures into trash and yes, there is indeed life after death for them, or battles after a crappy paintjob to say it better.

I’ll try to illustrate the process I follow to eliminate a thick or otherwise badly done paintjob on a miniature. It’s worth reminding you that you can do it for miniatures cast in metal, plastic and resin.

Here are the miniatures:

I think I might have been lucky with this batch of miniatures as I got two meltaguns, a plasmagun, a missile launcher and two plasma cannons, one of which, cast in metal, has Dark Angels iconography on it which I’ll use on another project.

Here’s a list of the material I’ll use in the cleaning process (mind some of them won’t be readily available if you live outside Brazil but I think you can find something similar where you live):

Acetone polish remover from the ZULU brand (with banana tree leaf extract) – I don’t know if it makes a diference, but, I’ve used acetone polish removers from other brands which didn’t yield the same results.

Glass jar with a lid – The lid is very important as Acetone is really volatile and evaporates quickly, so having a lid will help us save some of it and also its efficacy.

Toothbrush – An old toothbrush should do the trick.

Some sort of beaked plier (like a thin nose plier) or a pincer – You’ll need one of these to fish the miniatures out of the jar without having to remove the acetone polish remover.

You begin by filling half the glass jar with the acetone polish remover so that when you add the miniatures to the jar the solution in it won’t overflow. You must leave the miniature completely immerse in the solution so, if needed, add more of the acetone polish remover to the glass jar.

I’ll try to illustrate a “before and after” with 3 miniatures.

I can fit around five miniatures in this glass jar of mine, which I think is a reasonable number since the entire cleaning process won’t take long.

So you’ll leave the miniatures immersed for around 15 to 20 minutes before noticing the paint starts to peel off like shed skin.

If you leave the models in it for too long (plastic ones mind you) you’’ll noticed the acetone based solution might begin attacking it. The first ones to suffer with too much time in the solution are the bases that might get bent and lose its shape, then details on the model might lose shape os either vanish entirely so be careful with how long you let your miniatures soak in it.

A solution like the one I’m using can clean up to forty miniatures without losing efficiency.

Notice how the miniatures look puffed as the paint peels off. It does look like a second skin being shed doesn’t it?

As you use the same solution over and over again you might notice the solution changing its color and becoming cloudy, but don’t let it fool you as even with its new dirty look the acetone based solution is still as efficient as before. You might also notice some of the solution might evaporate even with the lid closed, so you might have to add more to the jar from time to time in order to keep the miniatures completely immersed.

Now we only need to get them out of the glass jar and remove the paint with the tootbrush.

Sometimes the acetone based solution might attack the glue holding the miniatures parts together separating them in the process.

A lot of miniature cleaning later.

It’s worth remind you that some paints, specially primers, might not come off from the miniature even with the use of the acetone based solution.

A Space Marine Tactical squad cleaned from its original paintjob, primed, and with base color applied.

Monthly Purchases:

I couldn’t resist once more and got into an Ebay auction for two painted Drop Pods!

You might think that buying miniatures is already expensive to me as I live in Brazil, so buying painted ones would be even more right?

Well, that’s partially true but if you’re patient and look for a good offer you might get surprised. So I ended up buying two Drop Pods in the color I wanted for £50,00 (fifty pounds), the price they’d cost me new on their sprues, with the advantage that I’ll get to play with them as soon as they get here. A bargain!

I also bought from a friend in the BoS Forum (a local forum in Sao Paulo) a metal Lysander for R$ 25,00 (twenty five reais).

So we came up with a total expense of R$ 111.30 (one hundred reais and thirty centavos – around U$D 54,00) from the acquisition of the Drop Pods and Lysander minus the leftover I had from last month.